Chandu menon autobiography meaning

Being unfamiliar with Malayali cuisine, they apparently confused the yogurt based accompaniment, kalan, normally eaten with rice, for a sweet dish and ate it faking great appreciation until he chose to laughingly point out their mistake. Malayalam satire of this period is replete with these kinds of stories, all of which point out the clumsy social situations that inter-racial interaction often produced.

Loss of traditional customs could be threatening to the old order; but often this was decried also because it meant a loss of sense of self, or of a feeling of equality. For the upper castes the colonial encounter was often the first experience of discrimination. Moreover, changes in lifestyle due to such diverse causes as urbanization, professionalization, or missionary activity, seems to have generated a tremendous amount of unease even amongst those men who were slowly adapting themselves to these changes.

Predictably, the responses were not uniform, and the reasons for these were not simply determined by their social origins. It was more the nature of the change that provoked different responses. In other matters of lifestyle, like food or clothing, the changes that occurred were often acknowledged, a little shamefacedly, in the form of humour.

To some extent, this kind of humour in the work of Chandu Menon, or in that of two of his contemporary satirists, Murkot Kumaran and Kesari Nayanar was quite self-reflexive, and though not spelt out as such, political in its critique of social chandu menon autobiography meaning. It contained the complexities and contradictions of self fashioning that was a part of the experience of modernity for these Malayali men.

Despite their shorn locks, continuing to wear a mundu, the sarong-like lower cloth worn by Malayali men, to work; eating traditional food off the plantain leaf with ones fingers; and developing a modern Malayalam to meet the challenge from English were all part of Downloaded from sih. Thus, for Malayalis by the end of the nineteenth century, becoming modern was intimately linked with grappling with their own sense of self.

And despite the awareness of a nascent national movement, the primary locus of their engagement was with carving out a distinct regional identity. The principle manifestation of this identity at the time was articulated in non-spatial terms in an attempt to create a new Malayalam. Language would be the vehicle for modernity; it would also create a community of speakers.

The linguistic community was co-terminous with other forms of community that had existed prior to this, like caste or religious group. The difference lay in the effort to transcend the boundaries of the other communities and create a regional identity that was to be centred on a shared notion of language and living space. Therefore, even though the experience of modernity might well have been a fragmented one, the attempts to overcome this through the creation of a new language was clearly an attempt at creating a shared space.

Chandu menon autobiography meaning: Chandu Menon, the first ÎmodernÌ

This was for two important reasons. One, the Malayalam itself was different and closer to the spoken idiom. In other words, it was the harbinger of the modern Malayalam that would be standardized in Malayalam prose writing by the twentieth century. Second, the novel was set within the world of the Malabar Nayar households, and was one that was comprehensible to the average Malayali reader.

No longer was literature to be confined to archaic periods or to the marvels of gods and goddesses, recoverable only through the medium of a pristine, Sanskritized language. While attempts to modernize and democratize the language had already begun, these had been restricted primarily to the religious realm. The novel, and the early novelists, provided the critical shift in the literary sensibilities of Kerala, marking the emergence of an entirely new literary domain.

This domain could become possible as the world itself was changing. Printing presses, newspapers, literature and the changed educational and professional regimes were all part of a phenomenon that was not simply restricted to ideas or language but found a resonance in the wider world of social interactions and lifestyles. InSwati Thirunal, the famous composer and ruler of Thiruvithancore set up the Government Press in Thiruvananthapuram with the help of Benjamin Bailey, the Protestant missionary.

Up north, a similar situation prevailed with Herman Gundert and the Basel mission acquiring four German lithographs during the s. Bhimji, a Gujarati trader settled in Kerala, was the first to conceive of and encourage a new kind of journalism in Kerala. While Bhimji too started off with religious texts like the bhagavatam, he later pioneered the publication of modern writing and was the one who started one of the early Malayalam newspapers, Kerala Mitram, that changed the direction of modern journalism in Kerala.

Though the newspapers were mostly bi-weekly affairs until the end of the nineteenth century, and never exceeded a circulation of tojournals like the Bhashaposhini, and later the Vidyavinodini, which started in the s, were also the sites for the earliest experiments with new writing, and seemed to have quickly generated a lively debate on Malayalam language and literature.

This debate involved different issues, people and aspirations. One part of it was concerned with how to modernize the language. The move away from a Sanskritized Malayalam was clearly influenced by such a concern and people like Chandu Menon were strong votaries of this shift. Priyadarshan, Malayala Patrapravartanam: Prarambhaswarupam,p. The relationship between the new language and literature, the means for its development and propagation were other concerns.

The decade of the s was the most critical in giving this discussion a direction. Here writers were as much arguing for a new Malayalam as they were celebrating the arrival of one. These were still uncertain times and people needed to marshal many arguments in their defence in order to justify the use of this new language. Within a decade the focus would move away from the newness of the language itself to a discussion about the literature.

It received a huge amount of publicity and most papers and literary journals continued to write about it months after its publication. And if a place is to modernize, it must happen through the medium of its language. Indulekha, though not having had any formal school education, has been educated at home by the best teachers and is well versed in English and Sanskrit.

Priyadarsanan, ed. But despite their having failed the reality test, they represented the acme of education and enlightenment. Both Indulekha and Madhavan combined the best of the East and West. In Indulekha, Nambudiri Brahmins are shown to be generally wary of English and all the modernity that it entailed. However, in creating Suri Nambudiripad, Chandu Menon excelled himself in a complex form of satire.

Here the Brahmin has neither English nor Sanskrit and becomes the butt of constant chandu menon autobiography meaning. They tell me you know English as well as Sanskrit. Now if I repeat a Sanskrit stanza to you, do you think you will understand it? At last he used to hammer out a garbled version of the lines, and now, according to his wont, he mutilated half a stanza after serious deliberation.

By making Indulekha, a Sudra Nayar woman, a Sanskrit scholar, Chandu Menon made a serious critique of the caste pretensions of the Brahmins. Hitherto, Sanskrit had been considered their language. Even though the fact that Malayalam had its base in Sanskrit from the medieval period meant that even Sudras learnt the language in a manner of speaking, real proficiency in Sanskrit was always assumed to be a Brahmin preserve.

In the battle about modern Malayalam raging in Kerala at that time, the votaries for preserving the Sanskrit based Manipravalam made a strong case to this effect. Chandu Menon, Indulekha English translation by W. Dumergue, pp. English education here was a metaphor for a modern attitude, one that Chandu Menon considered essential for young people.

Interestingly, a contemporary counter satire in that period, Parangodi Parinayam,33 ridiculed the idea that an English education was necessary for modernizing the community. Here the main protagonist Parangodi Kutty loses all knowledge of a Hindu way of life and chandu menon autobiography meaning. What is more, unlike Indulekha, she is rejected by the most eligible man and remains a spinster for the rest of her life.

In both these he had his own personal perspective, but it is significant that he located these as central to the project of modernity. Even those who critiqued his positions wrote in the language that he popularized. His success, as was noted repeatedly by his contemporaries, lay in this. Interestingly, many of the copy-cat novels of that period educated their main female protagonists, though it was never very clear where, or what, they studied.

And unlike Chandu Menon, they did not make clear what they felt was the purported intent of educating women. In his letter thanking W. Yet, in the interim, a pretty grim battle raged in the pages of the journals and newspapers, mainly between men of different persuasions, about the necessity of educating women. Such fears were not confined to Kerala, or India, during this period.

Many Victorians considered reading novels a dangerous pastime, guaranteed to lead to the ruination of young female minds. The case was often stated in peculiar and convoluted ways. Educated women would manage the finances better and take care of childcare and nurture with skill. Servants too would become redundant as education would encourage women to use their time more fruitfully in the home and kitchen, and they would spend their time in reading improving books instead of whiling it away in idle gossip.

The caste reform movements of the period argued for the modernization of education, employment, and of certain aspects of lifestyle. While in Indulekha, Suri Nambudiripad represents everything that is oppressive about the Nambudiris to the Nayars, in Sharada Chandu Menon had begun to explore the nuances of intra-caste differences amongst the Nayars themselves.

Within the public domain of the late nineteenth century the question of caste discrimination, for the Nayars, became centred on two main issues. One was that of the sambandham relationships between Nayar women and Nambudiri men; the other was that of land rights of the Nayar tenants in relation to Nambudiri landlords.

Chandu menon autobiography meaning: Chandu Menon has written that he

Through the novel Indulekha, Chandu Menon criticized the feudal system existed in the Hindu society that time and a clash of cultures between traditional past and well educated youth. Madhavan and Indulekha, the central characters of the novel are the symbols of new wave India while Suri Nambuthiripad represented the product of decayed feudalism that existed in the society then.

Chandu menon was inspired by his wife to write this novel. He was given the title of Rao Bahadur in for excellent service. He was a social reformer also. Kunjan Menon. While studying there he is reported to have qualified for the uncovenanted Civil Service by securing a high rank in the test for that Service. Inhis 52 year old father died due to diabetes.

In his mother died when he was in the matriculation class and he was forced to abandon studies. The couple had six children. Chandu Menon started his career as a clerk in the government service. After working in various offices in Malabarhe slowly rose to the position of a Munsiff, and in became the sub-judge of Calicut. It is possible to argue that she does find the relationship between the husband and the wife up to her expectations in America which she finds lacking in her own country.

Thus, it is the heterotopic space of compensation. It is further important to elaborate upon how the space plays vital role in constructions of the attitudes of the traveller. Such patterns are common in the writings of the European travellers. Her autobiography includes her experiences in India. The geographical space is foreign and it is possible to argue that it affects the subject position that she takes.

And hence, it is further important to study how she negotiates this colonialist-colonized boundary. For instance, Steel says: Nothing has impressed me more in India than the absolute necessity for keeping the Scales of Justice without the slightest bias. Give an inch, and Moslem cannot help taking an ell from Hindu, and vice versa. We Westerners who have outgrown many social distinctions cannot realize how much they mean to the Eastern.

Indeed, one of the gravest faults of our English education in England, for Indians, is that it has to be veneered on to a solid Eastern background Steel This is how Flora Annie Steel perceives Indian society. Here she posits herself as an outsider significantly making her racial difference apparent. It meticulously provides us an image of a traveller who describes what influenced and impressed her.

It clearly indicates the chandu menon autobiography meaning in her mind between the West and the East. In similar fashion, Athavale negotiates her Indian self when she is in America. In the social life of the West, family life seems almost extinct, and the population of the hotels is on the increase.

Chandu menon autobiography meaning: This novel expresses the

Unmarried women are exceeding the married in numbers. Are we going to learn a lesson from this condition in the West, or are we going to follow it? At present our social life is a curious one Athavale After returning from America, she clearly indicates in her autobiography that it is important to undertake the comparison of the social life of America, Europe and India Alike Flora Annie Steel, she posits herself as an outsider and a foreigner when she is in America.

Here her autobiographical I is clearly demarcated through the difference between the East and the West. In the above quote, this is how she criticizes the family life in the West. In a way, she cautions the Indians not to adhere to the westerners. Through the rhetorical question, she imposes that the Indians need to learn a lesson from the West and not to follow them in the matters related to the marriage and family system.

Thus, the mode of the travelogue is widely devised in the autobiography to construct the self.

Chandu menon autobiography meaning: Chandumenon was a voracious reader of

Writing autobiography in the form of travelogue is not a new idea. Many scholars have traced the affiliation between the autobiography and the travel writing in the 19th century. And hence, it is important to trace the trajectory of the literary form in which the genre autobiography was concomitant with the genre travelogue.